Abraham Lincoln, a History — Volume 02 eBook

On the evening of the day the Legislature met (January
12, 1857), the pro-slavery party held a large political
convention, in which it was confessed that they were
in a hopeless minority in the Territory, and the general
conclusion was reached that it was no longer worth
while to attempt to form a slave-State in Kansas.[1]
Many of its hitherto active leaders immediately and
definitely abandoned the struggle. But the Missouri
cabal, intrenched in the various territorial and county
offices, held to their design, though their labors
now assumed a somewhat different character. They
denounced Governor Geary in their resolutions, and
devised legislation to further their intrigues.
By the middle of February, under their inspiration,
a bill providing for a convention to frame a State
constitution was perfected and enacted. The Governor
immediately sent the Legislature his message, reminding
them that the leading idea of the organic act was to
leave the actual bona fide inhabitants of the
Territory “perfectly free to form and regulate
their domestic institutions in their own way,”
and vetoing the bill because “the Legislature
has failed to make any provision to submit the constitution
when framed to the consideration of the people for
their ratification or rejection.” The Governor’s
argument was wasted on the predetermined legislators.
They promptly passed the act over his veto.

The cabal was in no mood to be thwarted, and under
a show of outward toleration, if not respect, their
deep hostility found such means of making itself felt
that the Governor began to receive insult from street
ruffians, and to become apprehensive for his personal
safety. In such a contest he was single-handed
against the whole pro-slavery town of Lecompton.
The foundation of his authority was gradually sapped;
and finding himself no longer sustained at Washington,
where the private appeals and denunciations of the
cabal were more influential than his official reports,
he wrote his resignation on the day of Buchanan’s
inauguration, and a week later left the Territory
in secrecy as a fugitive. Thus, in less than three
years, three successive Democratic executives had
been resisted, disgraced, and overthrown by the political
conspiracy which ruled the Territory; and Kansas had
indeed become, in the phraseology of the day, “the
graveyard of governors.”

The Kansas imbroglio was a political scandal of such
large proportions, and so clearly threatened a dangerous
schism in the Democratic party, that the new President,
Buchanan, and his new Cabinet, proceeded to its treatment
with the utmost caution. The subject was fraught
with difficulties not of easy solution. The South,
to retain her political supremacy, or even her equality,
needed more slave-States to furnish additional votes
in the United States Senate. To make a slave-State
of Kansas, the Missouri Compromise had been repealed,
and a bogus legislature elected and supported by the
successive Missouri invasions and the guerrilla war